Deborah Sampson was the first known American woman to impersonate a man in order to join the army and take part in combat. She was born in Plympton, Massachusetts, on December 17, 1760 as the oldest of three daughters and three sons of Jonathan and Deborah Bradford Sampson. Both of her parents were direct Mayflower descendents.

     Deborah's youth was spent in poverty. Her father abandoned the family and went off to sea. Her mother was of poor health and could not support the children, so she sent them off to live with various neighbors and relatives. At the young age of ten, Sampson became an indentured servant in the household of Jeremiah Thomas in Middleborough. For ten years she helped with the housework and worked in the field. Hard labor developed her physical strength. In winter, when there wasn't as much farm work to be done, she was able to attend school. She learned enough so that after her servitude ended in 1779, she was hired as a teacher in a Middleborough public school.

     On May 20, 1782, when she was twenty-one, Sampson enlisted in the Fourth Massachusetts Regiment of the Continental Army at Bellingham as a man named Robert Shurtleff (also listed as Shirtliff or Shirtlieff). On May 23rd, she was mustered into service at Worcester. Being almost 5 foot 8 inches tall, she was almost a foot taller than the average woman of her day and taller than the average man. Other soldiers teased her about not having to shave, but they assumed that this "boy" was just too young to grow facial hair. She performed her duties as well as any other man.

 

                                                         

     Back home, rumors circulated about her activities and she was excommunicated from the First Baptist Church of Middleborough, Massachusetts, because of a strong suspicion that she was "dressing in man's clothes and enlisting as a Soldier in the Army." At the time of her excommunication, her regiment had already left Massachusetts.

     Although the last major battle of the Revolution had been fought the previous October when Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown, a desperate guerilla warfare was still being savagely fought in some areas by determined Tories who refused to give up. The British still occupied New York City and other strongholds. One of the Tory units was a feared and specially trained band led by Colonel James DeLancy, and several merciless hand to hand struggles took place. In these wild skirmishes Shurtleff demonstrated his courage, strength, loyalty and fighting skill over and over again. Once when his group were ambushed near Tarrytown, Shurtleff suffered a forehead wound from a sabre slash and then was felled by a musket ball in the upper left front thigh. At a field hospital, a French doctor bound up the head wound, but was not advised of the thigh injury. When the doctor began to attend another wounded soldier, Shurtleff limped out of the hospital, and later, using his knife, managed to extract the musket ball in his thigh.

     However, when he was later hospitalized for fever, the physician attending him discovered that he was a woman and made discreet arrangements that ended her military career. Sampson was honorably discharged from the army at West Point on October 25, 1783 by General Henry Knox.

     Deborah Sampson returned home, married a farmer named Benjamin Gannett, and had three children. She also taught at a nearby school. About nine years after her discharge from the army, she was awarded a pension from the state of Massachusetts in the amount of thirty-four pounds in a lump payment. After Paul Revere sent a letter to Congress on her behalf in 1804, she started receiving a U.S. pension in the amount of four dollars per month. In 1802, Sampson traveled throughout New England and New York giving lectures on her experiences in the military. During her lectures, she wore the military uniform.

     Deborah Sampson Gannett died April 29, 1827 in Sharon, Massachusetts, at age sixty-six. Her children were awarded compensation by a special act of Congress "for the relief of the heirs of Deborah Gannett, a soldier of the Revolution, deceased."

     On May 23, 1983, Governor Michael J. Dukakis signed a proclamation which declared that Deborah Samson was the Official Heroine of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Two news services stated this was the first time in the history of the United States that any state had proclaimed anyone as the official hero or heroine.